The University of Cape Town (UCT) is once again the top educational institution in Africa according to the recent QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) World University Rankings for 2013/14.

This year UCT is ranked at 145 globally, up nine places from last year. The top ranking university globally is Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) followed by Harvard University and University of Cambridge.

QS is the leading global career and education network serving ambitious professionals who are looking to continue with their education in both their personal and professional development.

“The QS World University Rankings are based on four key pillars: research, teaching, employability and internationalisation. The methodology consists of six indicators: academic reputation (40 percent); employer reputation (10 percent); faculty student ratio (20 percent); citations per faculty (20 percent); international students (5 percent); and international faculty (5 percent),” according to the company.

The best South African universities have all improved in their ranking in this year’s annual report. The University of Witwatersrand (Wits), the number 2 South African University, moved up 50 places to 313. Seven South African universities were included in this years annual QS World University Rankings, and 3 of these were ranked in the top 400 globally.

This year, the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings surveyed over 3000 universities globally and included 800 in the final rankings table.

In addition to the pillars and methodology, the company studies over 62000 academic responses and over 27000 employer responses in order to arrive at their results. This makes it the largest survey of academic institutions in the world.

For the very first time, Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg was included in this years survey and were placed in positions 551-600 and 601-650 categories respectively.

Given the extent and broad nature of the survey, only the top 400 universities are given specific positions. Thereafter, universities are placed in bands given that the differences in performance of the universities in each band is not significant enough to say that one is better than the other within the specific group.

From the research undertaken, Quacquarelli Symonds revealed that the success of UCT is driven by the strong performance for research citations. This means that the university is producing work and research that is of global importance and impact.

The head of research at Quacquarelli Symonds also stated that by developing world class universities is critical for developing nations and will assist South Africa to realize and achieve its enormous potential for economic growth in the foreseeable future. From this years survey and rankings, it is evident that the country’s top educational institutions are a lot more visible globally, especially UCT who is producing a significant number of ” high-impact research.”

UCT spokeswoman Patricia Lucas stated that they are extremely proud of the university and its improvement over the last year. She also commented that South African’s can now see that they can receive a world class education without having to leave the borders of the country.